Mexico City – Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday ended the street protest that clogged the heart of the capital for nearly seven weeks, but they vowed to find other ways to resist the incoming conservative president.
The former Mexico City mayor, who claims that his narrow loss in the July 2 presidential election was fraudulent, said he planned to travel across the country to meet with his supporters.
Spokesman Cesar Yanez told The Associated Press that the protesters would not retake Mexico City’s Reforma Avenue and its main plaza, the Zocalo, after they hold a convention there Saturday.
“Everything will return to normal,” Yanez said.
Traffic already was flowing along Reforma, which had been blocked by tents, cars and buses since July 30 in an unsuccessful bid to force a full recount in the presidential vote.
Lopez Obrador and his supporters refuse to recognize the slim victory of Felipe Calderon, the candidate of President Vicente Fox’s conservative National Action Party who is scheduled to take office Dec. 1.
Protesters started dismantling their tent city Thursday to allow the military to stage its Independence Day parade Saturday along its traditional route down Reforma.
Until now, protest leaders had suggested the future of the protest camps would be decided at the “National Democratic Convention” on Saturday, where supporters will be asked if they want to declare Lopez Obrador president of a “parallel government” to challenge Caldron’s administration.
Speaking in the Zocalo on Friday, Lopez Obrador did not offer any details of his planned nationwide tour.
“I am not giving up nor giving in, and I’m going to visit all the towns in the country,” he said. “Tomorrow will start a new era for the construction of the republic.” The protests that snarled traffic in the already congested metropolis of 20 million people took a toll on Lopez Obrador’s popularity and exposed divisions within his Democratic Revolution Party. Recent opinion polls pointed to growing resentment against the protest.
Lorenzo Ysasi, head of the National Business Chamber, said the demonstration cost the city more than 3,000 jobs and about 67 small business were forced to close.
In a letter published in local media Friday, the leftist party’s founder, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, said the decision to seize Reforma was “causing losses and wearing out the democratic movement in general.” The letter was sent to writer Eliana Poniatowska, a Lopez Obrador supporter.
The announcement of the end of the protest camps came a day after Fox decided to move Friday night’s annual independence celebration away from the main square to avoid the protesters.
The decision prompted Lopez Obrador to declare victory in that battle with Fox. His supporters planned to hold their own independence celebrations at the Zocalo.
Lopez Obrador had called on his supporters to turn their backs when Fox made the traditional independence night cry of “Viva Mexico!” Fox’s spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Friday the president moved the ceremony to Dolores Hidalgo, 170 miles away, because the government had “solid information” radical groups planned violence that could have caused deaths. He refused to give specifics.
Earlier Mexican presidents have sometimes celebrated the final Independence Day of their six-year terms in Dolores Hidalgo, a city of 130,000 people where Roman Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo made the first cry for independence from Spain in 1810.
The city is also in Fox’s home state of Guanajuato, a bastion of support for the National Action Party.
